It’s very good. It’s hard to believe it is your first one. Surely you mean your first published one. Keep it up, it may be better than writing.

Mike Devx

That’s a pretty durn good comic!

I’ve been mulling over the Rand Paul filibuster and the immature, cheezy, awful responses to it by Lindsey Graham and John McDumb, I mean, McCain. What’s really going on here? I’m pretty sure it’s *all* RINO vs Tea Party, and the continuing war by the RINOs against real conservastism.

Why is the Rand Paul filibuster so important for conservatives and conservatism itself? Why is it time for us to declare Graham and McCain personas non grata?

Let’s step back a bit and remember something from 2009. Via Wikipedia:
—–On February 19, 2009, in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC Business News Network editor Rick Santelli loudly criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages, which had just been announced the day before, as “promoting bad behavior” by “subsidizing losers’ mortgages” and raised the possibility of putting together a “Chicago Tea Party in July”. A number of the traders and brokers around him cheered on his proposal, to the apparent amusement of the hosts in the studio. It was called “the rant heard round the world”. [...]

The day following Santelli’s comments from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, on February 20, 2009, roughly 50 national conservative leaders participated in a conference call that gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.
—–
Tea bag mailings to the White House and protests had already been occurring, but this is where the Tea Party phenomenon was really birthed. And none of it, from the tea bag mailings, to the protests, to the Santelli outburst, to the rise of the Tea Party, had anything to do with Lindsey Graham, John McCain, or any other GOP member of the House or Senate. Our busybody apparatchiks were mired in their grumblings and mumblings, and were being utterly ineffective little bureaucratic drones. Gray and gray and gray. Establishment foot shufflers. Ineffective and meaningless. Conservatism was drifting in slumber.

The 2009 outburst occurred despite the RINO Establishment GOP. And it culminated in a 2010 revolution that also had *nothing* to do with the RINO Establishment GOP. And ever since then, the RINO Establishment GOP has fought tooth and nail to suppress and even defeat the Tea Party and the rise of conservatism outside their Washington DC chambers.

But the new conservatives, and the Tea Party, now have established a foothold within the chambers of the Senate and House in Washington DC. Lindsey Graham HATES this. John McCain HATES this. And many others HATE this as well. They are dedicated to the defeat of the new conservatives. This is, in fact, war.

Rand Paul sent fireworks flying this week. It may be that this moment in March, 2013, re-energizes the new conservative base and fires it up, just as Rick Santelli did so in February, 2009. It is eerie that in both cases we have a year and a half to see what happens until another mid-term election.

If the conservative base gets fired up again during 2013 the way it did last time in 2009, LOOK OUT for what may happen in 2014.

And Lindsey Graham and John McCain will have NONE of that. These frantic outbursts on their part are truly pathetic and desperate. It is clear to me why they are doing it. It is political war. They are deadly serious. And we all need to be deadly serious right back at these mothers.

I’ve been mulling over the Rand Paul filibuster and the immature, cheezy, awful responses to it by Lindsey Graham and John McDumb, I mean, McCain. What’s really going on here? I’m pretty sure it’s *all* RINO vs Tea Party, and the continuing war by the RINOs against real conservastism.

Why is the Rand Paul filibuster so important for conservatives and conservatism itself? Why is it time for us to declare Graham and McCain personas non grata?

Let’s step back a bit and remember something from 2009. Via Wikipedia:
—–On February 19, 2009, in a broadcast from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, CNBC Business News Network editor Rick Santelli loudly criticized the government plan to refinance mortgages, which had just been announced the day before, as “promoting bad behavior” by “subsidizing losers’ mortgages” and raised the possibility of putting together a “Chicago Tea Party in July”. A number of the traders and brokers around him cheered on his proposal, to the apparent amusement of the hosts in the studio. It was called “the rant heard round the world”. [...]

The day following Santelli’s comments from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, on February 20, 2009, roughly 50 national conservative leaders participated in a conference call that gave birth to the national Tea Party movement.
—–
Tea bag mailings to the White House and protests had already been occurring, but this is where the Tea Party phenomenon was really birthed. And none of it, from the tea bag mailings, to the protests, to the Santelli outburst, to the rise of the Tea Party, had anything to do with Lindsey Graham, John McCain, or any other GOP member of the House or Senate. Our busybody apparatchiks were mired in their grumblings and mumblings, and were being utterly ineffective little bureaucratic drones. Gray and gray and gray. Establishment foot shufflers. Ineffective and meaningless. Conservatism was drifting in slumber.

The 2009 outburst occurred despite the RINO Establishment GOP. And it culminated in a 2010 revolution that also had *nothing* to do with the RINO Establishment GOP. And ever since then, the RINO Establishment GOP has fought tooth and nail to suppress and even defeat the Tea Party and the rise of conservatism outside their Washington DC chambers.

But the new conservatives, and the Tea Party, now have established a foothold within the chambers of the Senate and House in Washington DC. Lindsey Graham HATES this. John McCain HATES this. And many others HATE this as well. They are dedicated to the defeat of the new conservatives. This is, in fact, war.

Rand Paul sent fireworks flying this week. It may be that this moment in March, 2013, re-energizes the new conservative base and fires it up, just as Rick Santelli did so in February, 2009. It is eerie that in both cases we have a year and a half to see what happens until another mid-term election.

If the conservative base gets fired up again during 2013 the way it did last time in 2009, LOOK OUT for what may happen in 2014.

Lindsey Graham and John McCain will have NONE of this. These frantic outbursts on their part are truly pathetic and desperate. Frantic attempts to re-establish RINO dominance. It is clear to me why they are doing it: this is political war. They are deadly serious. And we all need to be deadly serious right back at these two non-conservative bastards.

Charles Martel

Great takedown, Mike.

What I don’t get—and I totally agree with your view of McCain’s motivations—is why anybody would want to re-establish “RINO dominance?” It’s like being alpha steer in a feed lot where they fatten up pre-slaughter livestock. Does he not see how cowardly and needy he is? I just can’t understand how a man who was so incredibly physically brave during his ordeal in Vietnam has become a circus wuss in civilian life.

Spartacus

1) Ditto what Martel said about what Devx said.
2) DC is a very seductive place. John Glenn and Duke Cunningham also come to mind in the “shoulda stayed in the cockpit” club, so McCain has company. But while it’s an explanation, it’s not an excuse: criticisms though I may have of both Bushes (to continue the combat pilot series), I would not say that either was seduced, especially Dubya; they’re just not a tea-drinking family.
3) McCain referred to Paul and Cruz as “wackos.” Maybe I missed something, but can anyone remember a time when he said anything half as rude about a Democrat? And does that not tell us something?
4) While Rand Paul and a few others were filibustering an Islamophile CIA nominee, McCain and Graham were being wined and dined by the Community Organizer In Chief. Sometimes it’s misleading to focus too much on the symbolism of a snapshot of a moment in time… but sometimes it ain’t. And that’s a fascinating snapshot.
5) Graham is up in 2014. As he goes left when he should go right, may he go down when he comes up.

Mike Devx

Spartacus, you beat me to the punch:
> McCain referred to Paul and Cruz as “wackos.” Maybe I missed something, but can anyone remember a time when he said anything half as rude about a Democrat? And does that not tell us something?

As a conservativefunds article put it:
—–
Senator McCain then called conservatives “wacko birds” and said they were not “reflective of the views of the majority of Republicans.” When asked who he was talking about, McCain said, “Rand Paul, Cruz, Amash, whoever.”—–
McCain had earlier referred to his fellow Senate Republicans as irresponsible and making appeals to “college student libertarians in their dorm rooms”. This was the day after the Rand filibuster, and McCain and Graham were unrelenting in their disdain for Rand Paul.

This occurred the day after the evening where McCain and Graham sat down to the six person dinner with Obama at which, I am sure, they were jolly and laughing and full of just wunnerful bonhomie for Obama. Obama, the man who has promised to crush and destroy their Repblican party in the House and Senate.

Get that? McCain and Lindsey Graham are friendly as all get-out with the man who has declared himself their own sworn enemy, and who is publicly bent on their complete political destruction; but McCain and Graham are unrelentingly hostile towards their own GOP/Republican Senate mates.

Add to that Karl Rove’s nice little PAC that is dedicated to the defeat of Tea Party Republican candidates – dedicated to that purpose! The first target of the Rove PAC is conservative Iowa candidate Steve King for retiring Tom Harkin’s Senate seat. We have no indication that Mr. King is an “unelectable candidate”, yet he was Rove’s first announced target.

Do you really have any doubts about the purpose of Karl Rove’s PAC? This is an Establishment war within the Republican Party against its own people. There really can be no doubt.

What has our RINO GOP Establishment done in firing up their base for 2014? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They are, as is ALWAYS the case, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

What has Rand Paul done for firing up the base for 2014? What has Ted Cruz done? One hell of a lot! In comparing them against Rove, McCain, Graham… well, there is no comparison.

McCain lost me when in the middle of the 2008 campaign against Obama, the leadership of his own McCain campaign publicly and viciously began to assassinate VP candidate Sarah Palin. They politically assassinated their own VP candidate, right in the middle of the campaign! And McCain went along with it, and did nothing.

Say what you will of his campaign mgmt team – those execrable cockroaches Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace – but the buck stops at the top. McCain is to blame.

McCain and Graham do the conservative speaky-speaky for a couple of months every six years when they are seeking re-election, then it is back to a six year long slog having to handle their wildly non-conservative positions as they hob-nob with Obama and other “fellow Senate Democrats” and act respectfully towards their fellow Democrat senators – all the while they are being outmaneuvered and politically crushed by those same Democrat colleagues they treat with such loving care. Democrats who regularly call THEM vicious and evil. Do you understand? These Democrats do not just disagree with McCain and Graham, they label them with moral pejoratives such as vicious and evil, and call them monsters.

Yet it is their own Republican colleagues whom McCain and Graham reserve *their* most vicious rhetoric for.

What’s going on? Political war against real conservatives and conservatism. There is no doubt. We must not accept this. We must not put up with this.

SADIE

Metaphorically….
It’s a visual problem with the old guard Republicans. Like with many seniors, they wear a “progressive” lens because they can’t see far (into the future) nor what’s in front of them either. It’s like watching Norma Desmond …..

Google other work by Steve Schmidt since 2008, and you’ll come to the conclusion that the Steve Schmidt and Nicole Wallace in that Dunn article *are* correctly portrayed.

Think back to the 2008 campaign. Do you think the level of disgust, disdain and hatred for Sarah Palin shown there has ANY resemblance to reality? What in the world did she do to deserve that, such that even during the campaign, Schmidt and Wallace began to politically assassinate her? Her popularity? Her populism?

Well color me stupid. But I have always thought the role of the Vice Presidential candidate *was* to be populist, to be the fire-breather. The Presidential candidate gets to be somber, dignified and magisterial. It is the job of the Vice Presidential candidate to do the heavy lifting in speeches, to fire up the crowd, to be provocative. Yet Schmidt and Wallace and the team decided to *muzzle* Sarah Palin even before they began assassinating her. They deliberately made her ineffective in her role, first, and then assassinated her. Say what?

Think about the level of vicious rhetoric you just saw directed at her in that article. Then think about what these same people have to say about Joe Biden, who is definitely several orders of magnitude dumber than Sarah Palin. Compare their rhetoric! Against Sarah Palin as against Joe Biden. And then ask yourself again, what in the hell exactly is going on here?

Spartacus

Devx — Speaking of McCain campaign staff, don’t forget about this. Dems kept McCain’s campaign office lights from going out, so to speak, in the same way that they funded Todd Akin in the primary. And the GOP never catches on to these things. And Lucy keeps pulling that football away right before Charlie Brown gets to it. Crikey.

Look, just because someone is a republican, doesn’t mean they are Good or non corrupt. When I told people that the solution to Britain’s political problems was to first execute 50% of the bureaucracy, I didn’t specify a party requirement.

Because there wasn’t one.

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com Ymarsakar

“And then ask yourself again, what in the hell exactly is going on here?”

It is going exactly as planned. Why would anyone think it confusing?

Mike Devx

Ymar, you say in #11:It is going exactly as planned. Why would anyone think it confusing?

I guess I myself remain unconvinced that they are *all* nefariously plotting. What if they are simply misguided, believing in ideas that lead us all to harm? Does it matter whether they actively intend us harm, or are instead accidentally (mistakenly) leading us to great harm?

One fellow comes to mind: He was a member of the House Of Representatives a few years back, a Democrat. He took the opportunity to speak on an issue. He was concerned about a protest about to take place on an island, I forget which. He openly worried – on an open microphone within the US House of Representatives! – that that many people, congregating on one side of the island, would cause the island to flip over.

The polite side of me wonders whether to consider that incapacity, incompetence, or merely plain old grotesque stupidity. But I think that *if* the people of his district had any level of civilization still residing within their own thick skulls, they’d have found a way to remove him from office rather quickly. The Democrat hierarchy rather quickly came to the same conclusion, and declared that he was on medications and had not been responsible for the words he let forth from his mouth. As for me, I doubt *any* level of medication would cause any person reasonably enlightened and educated by any educational system within the last three thousand years to be capable of such a statement, but that’s just me.

I know you could feed me liquor until I die from poisoning, and no matter how utterly drunk I became unto the point of death, the worry that an island would tip over because too many people gathered on one side, would never even enter the liquor-besotted cells of my brain; let alone those words escape my lips.

Well, maybe there’s something in the water that the Democrats are drinking; I don’t know.

But were his statements part of an intricate nefarious plan? I doubt it. And if *he* could be that grotesquely stupid, why can’t many others that we’ve managed to elect be similarly stupid, if not quite so egregiously stupid? Does it take a vast planned conspiracy, or does it merely require a conspiracy of dunces?

Of course I could go on. I’ll sum up: There are evil ideas and we can adopt them without knowing they’re evil, or being aware of the terrible consequences down the road of enacting them. Our current leadership seems to have come to believe that they are our Ruling Class, our Privileged Elite. They may not quite see themselves as our god-descended Monarchy, but they’re getting awfully damned close to it. Their system is about to collapse around their ears. Maybe they see that; maybe they do not. Perhaps all these pre-tyrannical steps they are taking, that appear to be arming the government against a coming civilian rebellion, are intelligently planned and purposeful, with the eventual intent of putting their iron boot down upon us when it inevitably becomes necessary; or maybe this is just the mindless spasm of a huge national bureaucracy instinctively detecting a threat to its existence and they, like the cells of the bureaucratic organism, are themselves almost mindlessly spasming in reacting to that threat from all those “bitter clingers” they practically view as their serfs, as their property? Hard to say, for me.

http://OgBlog.net Earl

Nice cartoon, BW….just that I think you’re being awfully optimistic!

I’ll believe in a tipping point after I see the evidence – and it will take more than 2014 to convince me.

I felt euphoric after the 2010 midterms….only to be brought crashing back to reality by the results in 2012, both primary and general.

So….perhaps in 2016 I’ll join you in celebrating a tipping point – if the evidence warrants celebration.

SADIE

Your first cartoon: Yankee “doodle” Dandy!

Writing this blog is a labor of love. However, if you'd like to donate money for my efforts, please feel free to do so: